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Nokia introduced the Nokia N91 multimedia smartphone, the company's latest device optimised for mobile music consumption in India. The latest Nseries device launched in India will come preloaded with 100 songs and have an integrated 4-gigabyte hard disk that will allow it to store up to 3000 songs. Nokia Nseries also shared that it has joined hands with music maestro AR Rahman for his "Pray For Me, Brother" music initiative.

This alignment, with one of India's leading contemporary musicians is part of Nokia's strategy to build the mobile music domain through collaboration with the best in the industry whilst parallely providing music enthusiasts in India access to an iconic mobile music device with cutting-edge smart phone capabilities. The Nokia N91 is the first of its kind music smart phone that delivers seamless switching between the integrated functions of music, smart phone and imaging. What differentiates the Nokia N91 is the fact that it is always connected, enabling users to download music while on the move, add songs to their play list and share them anytime, anywhere.

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The cast of Bombay Dreams' national tour--which is shimmying its way across the US through October 1st--will perform in the cabaret benefit "Louder Than Words" in Dallas, TX. The show will be presented Station 4's the Rose Room on June 12th at 8 PM.

The musical, which incorporated the pulsing sounds and colorful visuals of Bollywood films into its story, launched its tour on February 21st, 2006, in Cosa Mesa, CA (after playing an out-of-town tryout in Tucson, AZ). The show, which also features choreography by Lisa Stevens, musical direction by Kevin Farrell and sets by Ken Foy; the costumes are from the Broadway production. The tour is a co-production with members of the Independent Presenters Network (which includes a number of theatres in the US and Canada), Atlanta's Theater of the Stars and Bucephalus Touring LLC.

A hit in London (where it opened at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in 2002 and closed in 2004), Bombay Dreams opened at the Broadway Theatre on April 29th, 2004 and ran for 30 previews and 284 regular performances. With music by A R Rahman and Don Black, the lavish show was based on an idea by Shekhur Kapur and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was the musical's original producer. Meera Syal penned the book and Tony Award-winner Thomas Meehan (The Producers, Hairspray) adapted a new book based on the Broadway and London scripts. The tour features a combination of music from the original London version and from the Broadway production.

Bombay Dreams' score includes "Salaa'm Bombay," "Bollywood," "I Could Live Here," "Is This Love?," "Famous," "Chaiyya Chaiyya," "How Many Stars?," and "Shakalaka Baby," which was danced around a spectacular onstage fountain on Broadway. The fountain is featured in the tour, which will conclude in Seattle on October 1st.

12-year-old Raj Pandit turns composer and gears up to launch his first Kashmiri folk remix album.

Age is no bar for talent and 12-year-old Raj Pandit is certainly such an example with a Kashmiri folk remix album on the cards. "I have worked with my mother for the album – she sung the songs while I composed the music," he says. Hailing from the state, the Pundit's have developed a natural flair for Kashmiri music. "I don't have a choice, I'm surrounded by mum's music all the time; it just grows on me," he adds.

An ardent fan of AR Rahman, Raj met the music King of Bollywood at a music concert and was suitably awed. "No one can make music like AR Rahman. I want to be like him. At this stage I don't expect to work with him, but he gave me his blessing and that means a lot to me," he says.

Raj started playing the tabla and the harmonium at the age of three and dreams of becoming a music director one day. "I know I have a long way to go and to become a music director, listening is very important. One has to listen to good music in order to create something new and different," he quips.

Kailash Kher, Roopkumar Rathod and Sameer are some of the musicians who visit his studio. "I take their advice and they guide me about programming. It certainly rubs off when you take advice from such senior people."

The notion of a musical about Bollywood (India's thriving film industry) held promise. Yet Bombay Dreams' mix of splashy production numbers and melodramatic kitsch, while occasionally diverting, is seldom involving and ultimately undistinguished.

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Much revised from London to Broadway, Bombay Dreams has been revised again for the touring production giving its Houston premiere at Hobby Center.

The plot centers on Akaash, a lad of the Bombay slums, who dreams of becoming a Bollywood star. As he sings in one of Don Black's hackneyed lyrics: "Like an eagle was born to fly/Right across the open sky/I was born to be seen/On a screen/In Bollywood." Actually, Akaash, and his show, were born to recycle every old showbiz clich in their new Bollywood setting.

The story's lack of credibility is epitomized by the pivotal early scene in which Akaash participates in a protest that breaks up the Miss India pageant. Security there must be woefully lax, because not only is the pageant interrupted, but Akaash proceeds to hog the spotlight for an entire "rap" number. No one stops him. When he's finished, Rani, the reigning Bollywood movie queen (whose number he wrecked) is ready to sign him as her new co-star — his big break!

Adding to the scene's unlikeliness is the fact that Sachin Bhatt's Akaash, though energetic and likable enough, has nothing like the charismatic star power the other characters keep insisting he projects. His strutting and posturing, in his pageant-stopping turn and elsewhere, seem like stock imitations of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Yet he keeps eliciting such jaw-dropping assessments as "You're a firecracker, Akaash — I just lit the fuse." Puh-lease!

Once the trite tale sets Akaash on the path to stardom, he conceals his slum roots and turns his back on his friends, including loyal, eunuch buddy Sweetie, and even his dear old granny. Will Akaash see the error of his ways in time to save their slum from being bulldozed by a greedy developer? Will he choose egomaniacal sexpot Rani or idealistic, independent filmmaker Priya — who is herself in danger of marrying the cutthroat lawyer who pretends to be helping the slum-dwellers but is really in league with the developer?

The book (by Meera Syal and Thomas Meehan) can't seem to settle on a tone. Half the time, it aims for glib spoof. Typifying this is Kitty DeSouza, the Joan Rivers-like gossip maven of Bollywood (a preposterous cartoon, though amusingly enacted by Christine Toy Johnson). Carried away with fame, Akaash says things like "Ciao, baby!" When Akaash, rehearsing a love scene with Priya, finally gets it right, she echoes My Fair Lady: "By George, I think you've got it."

Even Sweetie, claiming to be Akaash's agent after the kid's break, turns wise guy when asked his name: "William Morris."

The rest of the time, the show's take on moviedom's behind-the-scenes back-stabbing and heartache seems informed chiefly by such Hollywood howlers as Valley of the Dolls and The Oscar. Hard-bitten veteran Rani spouts such gems as "I've survived in this snakepit for 15 years!" Paging Susan Hayward.

The show gains some genuine feeling with a dead-serious plot turn late in Act 2 — but lapses back for a cartoonishly cute resolution of the wedding-day showdown between hero and villain.

Top Indian film composer A.R. Rahman's music has its moments of authenticity and surges of feeling and melody in the better ballads such as Is This Love? and Hero. Yet the numbers lean heavily on repetition, too often lapsing into sound-alike pop wallpaper. Even the best tunes are not much helped by Black's lyrics, which are pedestrian at best, ridiculous at their Shakalaka Baby worst.

That production number is the show's signature "wet sari" routine, with the dancers cavorting in an onstage fountain to a jingly beat. Yes, it's eye-catchingly colorful and superficially exotic. Like all the show's production numbers, it's also long on spectacle, short on substance.

Bhatt's sturdy-voiced Akaash is more palatable in his later, chastened phase than the cocky posturing of his early scenes. His two leading ladies are quite good: sleek Sandra Allen as the spoiled-rotten Rani and Reshma Shetty as the serious-minded Priya. Aneesh Sheth has some moving scenes and sings expertly as the self-sacrificing Sweetie, hopelessly in love with Akaash.

Director Baayork Lee keeps it all moving, the story told in brisk, broad strokes. Lisa Stevens' choreography is lively and vividly performed, though the moves sometimes resemble aerobics routines. The production values are (inevitably) colorful and exotic.

Yet ultimately and overall, the show that promised a genuine Indian feast settles for curry-flavored bubble gum.

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